DMCA, Fair Use and You

Just last week U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel handed down his verdict in the Lenz v. Universal case stating that thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) copyright holders must have:

…a consideration of fair use prior to issuing a takedown notice will not be so complicated as to jeopardize a copyright owner’s ability to respond rapidly to potential infringements. The DMCA already requires copyright owners to make an initial review of the potentially infringing material prior to sending a takedown notice; indeed, it would be impossible to meet any of the requirements of Section 512 (c) without doing so. A consideration of the applicability of the fair use doctrine simply is part of that initial review.

This is victory for Lenz as she can now go on to sue Universal for damages due to their unfounded takedown notice. What does this mean to bloggers?

While it might not halt someone for shooting off a takedown notice for content they fill infringes on their rights, it might provide a legal recourse for the blogger to fight back. Of course, this all depends on the situation, but it definitely something to think about before charging into the legal notice fray.

A follow up from the legal point of view on Dear Author: Unsubstantiated Cease and Desist Letters Under Scrutiny.

Dear Diablo Cody, your movie made me want to read your book

Dear Diablo,

Can I call you that? I feel like we have so much in common what with the fact that your name means Devil and anyone trying to reach me via the call back of my building needs to press 666. Also there’s that whole humor thing, you’ve got a great sense of one—wicked and erudite—and I like to laugh. Obviously we were meant to be the best of friends even if it might take me a while to get all of your jokes. In lieu of instantaneous friendship (as well as my own descent into stalkerdom) I thought it only fitting to post this open letter to you as you have the distinction of being the first writer whose movie has compelled to seek out their totally unrelated first book.

Wizard, I know.

While the saw-the-movie-must-read-the-book affect is not new, it relies on the subject of the movie to compel the reader to search out the book for more illumination. How many copies of the Constant Gardener did I sell before the movie came out? I lost count. The Da Vinci Code? Let’s not even go there. And while the increase in book sales often proceeds the movie, I’ve also read (and sold) many a book to see if the movie measured up or to explain some plot twist the movie glossed over. I’m sure many a reader is picking up Atonement for the first time after walking out of the theatre saying, “Wait a minute, that was an epic love story?”

Juno did not make me feel this way. No, Juno left me with a wide smile as I walked out of the theatre for the second time. It made me laugh, it make me cry, and it make me tell all my friends, but at no point did I think, “Wow, I wish there was an accompanying novel to explain X, Y, or Z.” Your name, however, gave me pause. Diablo Cody just sounded so familiar—like I’d seen it somewhere before.

And I had, on the shelves of my old bookstore, in the biography section because we really had no good place to put satirical essays. I even think that I mentioned your name once, long ago and way back in these archives, on bloggers turned writers. Now, I’ll admit the whole blogger turned published writer scenario is a sore spot with me because once upon a time it seemed every other book deal you read or book that came into my store was based on a blog. I became dismissive of the books in general, and Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper unfairly got lumped in. A coworker, whose roommate stripped for a living, loved your book (as did said roommate), but still I remained unconvinced.

With so much to read in the bookstore, I committed the cardinal sin—dismissing an entire category of books without giving them a chance so that I could focus elsewhere.

My loss.

Well, here it is, one year after the official closing of my store, and I’m going to go pick up a copy of Candy Girl from Powells. Juno showed me just how funny (yet poignant) you can be, and while I don’t expect to experience the same emotions from you book, I do expect it will contain the same sharp sense of humor found in your movie. If it does, I guarantee that I’ll be recommending your book just as I’ve recommended Juno to friends.

The newly converted are always the most fervent.

Playing at Being Ginger Rogers*

Kristin Nelson had a great post up at Pubrants covering Michael Cader’s keynote speech for the Backspace conference called, “Things No one Understands About Publishing, and the Internet, Featuring the Most Important Thing No One Ever Tells Authors, and the Most Important Thing Publishers Don’t Know.”

Along with advising authors to campaign like they’re self-published even if they have a big house behind them and know your audience he had some great advice about using bloggers and the internet (bullets five and six) that bear (bare?) further discussion.

In bullet five Kristin summarizes Cader’s remarks on bloggers and how they know when they’re being marketed to, and it’s true. I get emails all the time from publishers (and authors) hawking this book or that, most of which I’m not interested in. The quickest way to turn me off is to just blitz me with a mass email with no personalization or originality. Great, you’ve got a book out that relates in no way to anything I’ve ever discussed on this blog. Why would I want to read that?

Answer: I don’t. You didn’t give me a reason to so I’m probably going to ignore the email.

But what if I’m a tiny bit interested? What if there is something there that makes me think, “Hmm, I want to learn more about this”?

I may not immediately shoot off an email saying “send me the goods.” Nope, I’ll probably do some research first, and almost every time I get this feeling I find absolutely nothing out there (except for a blurb about the sale at Publisher’s Marketplace).

Which leads me to Cade’s (as summarized by Kristin) bullet point six: “Publishing often has it backwards. They keep a big book a secret until the release day and then there is a big publicity push…The internet values what’s old, what can be found in a search, what is repeated over time.” If I go out there looking for information about your book not provided in the publicity release (and let me tell you, a lot of things are not included in the publicity release), I need to find more than that Publisher’s Marketplace blurb and an almost nothing Amazon page acting as a placeholder. Does the author already have a website I can look at? Is there some excerpt out there that I can read to give me some idea of this person’s writing? How can I create buzz for you if I have nothing to link to?

The internet, and buzz by bloggers, is built through those interconnected links.

As soon as you start putting out those emails or sending out those ARCs you should have something in place with more information than your publicity release. You should have something set up so that other lit bloggers can contact you to get on your list or find out more about your product. Say I read about something on someone else’s lit blog and think, “wow, I love this. This is totally up my readership’s alley,” only to find out I need a company letterhead and $0.41 in postage to try and get your attention (yes, Minotaur, I’m talking about you). It’s not like I can’t rise above the adversity that is my relationship with the US Postal Service, but if you are trying to build buzz—especially internet buzz—you should pander to the format used by bloggers: electronic.

The fastest way for me to tell 150 to 200 people about your book (and how excited I am by it) is not to send out a newsletter and pay $61.50 to $82.00 in postage but to hit post on blogger and tell them for free.

And the fraction of that readership that are interested in the title as well? They’re going to do their own readership. They’re going to see what other bloggers are saying and take a look at the web pages the author and publisher have provided. They are going to spin the great Google algorithm and see what they can find.

I fear that this is coming across muddled because I’m suffering the duel affects of too little sleep and mondo allergies, or that I’m perhaps asking too much, but the truth is as soon as those publicity emails go out, you need to have something in place for people online to learn about your book(s). Word of mouth can spread farther and faster in the electronic realm, but it needs something already established to feed off of or link back to. A lit blogger’s casual mention (with or without an accompanying snapshot) of an ARC or publicity statement they received is enough to spur more than a few people to go looking for information on your book.

Give it to them.

Throw up a simple website or make use of a free Blogger page to get started while you’re building the finished product. Set up some way for lit bloggers to email you about getting more info on the title or about receiving an ARC. If you’re afraid that they’re trying to scam you, require bloggers to submit a site address and have an intern check their content out. I don’t mind a publishing company asking me my daily traffic or who comprises my reading audience—that’s good business and hopefully it will help them specialize what publicity emails they send my way in the future.

What are your thoughts?

What’s the first thing you do on the internet when you hear about a book you might be interested in?

*And doing everything backwards while in heels

Working on the chain gang

I’ve had this word document open on my work computer waiting for inspiration to strike in between phone calls. Part of the distraction has been the blood stained copy of Chelsea Cain’s novel Heartsick sitting next to me (Sylla nicely sent me a copy that was floating around her backroom). Part of it is that this is Memorial Day weekend for most people, while today is my “Monday.” And still another part is that my brain is just preoccupied with matters of horseracing, customer interaction, and the total disbelief that often fills my days here that people wager this much money on a sport they maybe only have a 33% (or 28% depending on where you look up the stats) of seeing some kind of a return on.

I think you have a better chance of picking out a bestseller (wasn’t there a story on that not too long ago in the Times?)…or maybe you don’t. Depends on your definition of bestseller, I guess.

Y’all seem to feel the way I do on TPO issue, which is nice to know. Almost all my purchases lately have been in the Trade size because it fits in my purse perfectly.

The Written Nerd has a wonderful write up on how she feels about book reviews on her site. Definitely something to check out.

Colleen of Chasing Ray zeroed in on the whole NBCC maggot fiasco with a well-written query about how the post got through in the first place.

And I wish that I could provide some of bookish thoughts to finish this off, but it’s five minutes ‘til I’m out of here and there’s a drinks at a friend’s house calling my name.

I’m sure I’ll be much more bookish tomorrow, or at least wrapped up in a book. Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend if you don’t get back here until Tuesday!

Retirement in the Air (not me)

Is it just me, or is there retirement in the air? First Nadia Cornier retired her blog on May 11th and now Miss Snark announced her departure from the blogosphere this morning.

Cornier has removed her past blog entries and plans on pooling the best of the best together with handouts she written for various seminars and conventions to form an ebook she will sell on her site. Part of the proceeds will go to fund Absynthe Muse, a non-profit (that Ms. Cornier is on the board of) young adult writing community. She’ll also be updating and upgrading the Firebrand agency website and may return to the blogging world in some capacity via her official site (no guarantees though).

Miss Snark, on the other hand, is leaving her blog up with the archives intact for the use of snarklings new and old alike for the foreseeable future. Her email account, however, will be closed in the next couple of days and this will be the end of the crapometer.

It will be interesting to see if any other blogging agents or full time book bloggers follow in their path in the near future. Good luck on your next endeavors, ladies.

Blogs of Note: Twisted Kingdom

Liz B, who runs A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, highlights a new blog every week in her Blog of the Day posts. The blogs range from reader to professional (librarian, bookseller, and publisher) to author blogs and represent the interesting and informative in their field. Thanks to this feature on Liz’s site I’ve found many delightful blogs that I never would have discovered otherwise. I’ve always wanted to do something similar here with the new, intriguing, or just plain pretty blogs that I run across in my lit-blog surfing, so I’ve decided to borrow Liz’s practice* and make it my own.

To that end, let me introduce the first blog of note in what I hope will become an ongoing tradition here at Bookseller Chick central: Twisted Kingdom.

Twisted Kingdom (the blog) was created in September 2006 in response to perceived lack of fantasy review sites on the web, especially when compared to the abundance of romance reader review sites. As Nath, one of the founding reviewers of Twisted Kingdom, explained to me, “There's been a lot more paranormal romance on the market in the last few years, but there are still many fantasy books in which romance is very limited, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't appeal to romance readers. So we thought it'd be fun and helpful to start a review blog for fantasy/paranormal books.”

The blog recently experienced a rebirth in March, and the reviewers—Ames, Dance Chica, Kailana, Mailyn and Nath—have made a concentrated effort to post daily since then. In addition to book reviews categorized by their fantasy type, readers will also find a fantasy dictionary (where the reviewers attempt to define Urban Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, etc as well as give examples of books that fit that subgenre) as well as guest posts by popular authors (Kelley Armstrong was the latest to post this month).

Twisted Kingdom is open to submissions from fantasy authors (including self-published) from the category of Young Adult fantasy on and is looking to make a name for themselves. If you’re interested in getting your book reviewed, or just reading up on what others think of the newest fantasy releases, this is a blog to check out.

Here’s hoping this rebirth leads to a long and fruitful life for both Twisted Kingdom and the Blogs of Note** series.

*Liz, in theater they claim that borrowing is the greatest form of flattery and please know that I’ll work to uphold your tradition of blog coolness.

**If you have any suggestions for blogs to be included in the blogs of note series, please email me at bookseller {dot} chick at gmail. All blogs of note will eventually find their way into the side bar column of links for a permanent home.

No longer printing despite demand...

It was with great sadness that I realized today that POD-DY Mouth is moving on and will no longer be running her website (you can find her official post here). If not for the anonymous P.M. I would have never discovered Will Clarke and the many other fabulous authors who decided to strike out on their through print on demand. Her insight into the POD world--and the accompanying round-up of articles related to it--was unequaled (in my opinion) by any other site on the net.

That said I completely understand why now would be the time to quit, and I'm glad that she stuck around this long.

So long, POD-DY Mouth, and thanks for all the books.